


The Sound of Emptiness

by oceansinmychest



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: F/F, Freakytits implied, Guilt, Light Angst, Mental Anguish, One Shot, Post-Canon, Reflection, Regret, Remorse, Season/Series 05, Self-Reflection, post s5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 00:09:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14841837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: Do you ever regret the things you’ve said and done? Vera does. (Post-S5, after the burial of Joan Ferguson.)





	The Sound of Emptiness

**Author's Note:**

> With Season 6 nearly two weeks away, I wanted to write my own version of what could happen. I listened to the band, Library Tapes, while writing this. Perfect ambient music.

Some things are never laid to rest.

_What have I done?_

The recently reinstated Governor Vera Bennett lies in bed wide awake. The stillness of her breathing doesn’t clear her conscience. Constantly, she readjusts her position. At one point, she clutches the flattened pillow that offers no neck support. She shifts on her side. She flops onto her stomach. She lays on her back. It’s difficult sleeping alone, even more difficult to dwell on all the wrongs of your life.

So, it’s a pity party for one.

In her pajamas, she experiences a childlike vulnerability. She’s already looked under the bed twice and checked the locks thrice. Incredibly restless, her hands fold atop her chest, reminiscent of Mum's dying days. Her hair splays across the pillow. It’s getting long enough to choke her.

As an accessory to murder, she imagines her life behind bars. They would eat her alive like dogs. Uncorked wine turns to vinegar. _Don’t think that,_ Vera reprimands herself while her stomach churns.

An indiscernible exhaustion seeps into every pore and yet, she cannot rest. Sound, peaceful nights evade her entirely. Sinewy legs kick off the sheets. Too hot, too cold. She freezes and she burns, caught in the throes of extremities.

Her story has been written in bad, short sentences robbed of complexity, riddled with simplicity. Joan bloody Ferguson made her feel like somebody worth noticing. Consider this to be a diagnosis entitled ‘crisis of conscience.’ An inner struggle plagues her. Joan Ferguson is her cure as much as her disease.

“Fuck,” she whimpers.

It all comes back to her.

Joan’s heavy machinery was too much to handle.

Nailed to the cross that is her stiff mattress, Vera becomes frozen. Petrified, a sizzling panic keeps her awake. She should’ve invested in a new house. Her throat tightens like a tourniquet. Despite cutting out the rot, she lives in a broken home.

A pathetic sniffle escapes her. Tears well up and she swallows them down. She tastes the price of salt on the tip of her tongue.

Her hand presses against her forehead where the lines bunch and gather. There’s grey in her hair that wasn’t there before.

She regrets tearing apart the letter addressed to Shayne while Joan was in protective custody. How the scraps fell down like ashes. _We all fall down now._

She shouldn’t have abandoned her mentor. Shouldn’t have left the Last Supper like a guilty Judas.

The rope swung not once for Ferguson, but twice (the dummy swinging from the stairwell had marked the start of a death sentence). Joan’s omniscience paid the toll.

Vera touches her collarbone, her chest, her breast. A heart's still there.

The sickly, grey sheets grab her by her petite waist. Vera chalks this up to Catholic Guilt despite not setting foot in a church since Mum’s funeral. She always hated the eeriness that sent tingles down her spines and how the air carried a judgmental quality to it.

Her own guilt says, “my fault, my fault, my fault.”

_She’s right. I’ll always be a pathetic, little underling._

If only she hadn’t been so desperate for approval, for some goddamn recognition, for fucking love, but here she is.

 **Alone**.

Akin to a mouse, she fidgets. She fumbles while reaching for her nightstand and manages to slide open the drawer, pulling out a gift barely forgotten, ever present like Bluebeard’s bloody chamber. During her reign as Governor, Joan had given it to her, commending her for her initiative – feeding her white lies and half-truths.

Of course Vera ate it up with gratitude. She wore it every day until the fire.

Frowning, she's on her back dangling the piece of jewelry above her face. The chain glimmers in the pale moonlight. She wishes she could go back to that night or to the start. Like a sponge, she soaked up Joan's pride and thin grin. It’s foolish to cling to this little trinket, but that’s what she gets for being a dreamer.

“Why could I never be good enough for you?” She asks in a hushed tone, her lips brushing the metal that has now warmed from the touch of her skin. It's a ghostly kiss of consequence.

As if her presence still lingers in this room, Joan haunts Vera.

For all her fiddling, the clasp catches beneath her thumbnail. She notices the grooves and lines that riddle her nail. Still a sentimental girl, she snaps on the bracelet. It acts as a cuff that tethers her to a lost idol, her fallen successor.

It wasn’t Jake that her mind would take her to, it was always Joan.

She imagines a kinder life where Deputy and Governor walked side by side before the toils of carnage, misunderstandings, and twisted words. Vera closes her eyes and listens to the breeze hum behind the closed window. How dangerous it is to dwell on the things that used to be and couldn’t be.

Truth’s a bastard.

In the dark of the night, her phone goes off. She flinches at the vibrations that rattle her out of her misery. Vera spares an anxious glance at the screen. Relief swarms her features once she notices that Jake Stewart isn’t offering a drunken apology, but Will Jackson offering solidarity.

Will has also been reinstated as her right hand, her deputy, a man who has backed her up from the start.

“Vera,” he begins, only to trail off. The air grows stale.

She wonders what Will’s thinking. What runs through his frantic mind to the point where she can hear his ragged breathing? It must be this: _Did you bury me deep enough? Too late._ But she doesn’t know; ignorance brands her.

“Hello?” She falters. “Will?”

“Vera, I’ve something to tell you.”

Dread knots her stomach. She bolts upright. Her shadow is so much smaller than herself. The dim, technological glow illuminates all her flaws. Her teeth draw her bottom lip into her mouth somewhat. Her jaw tightens. She hears it in his voice: something wrong, something _wrong_.

God, even her bloody teeth throb. Maybe she is changing, transforming into something else.

“I.. I buried Joan.”

Words wrap around her tongue. It takes time to digest. The line falls silent. It’s dead. Like Joan.

Abruptly, she hangs up. The action blocks out his slew of profanities – his string of fuck, fuck, fuck that causes him to pull on his hair. Her phone hits the bed, her stare watery. Her chest burns.

She lets out a soft, racking sob that ripples through her body. Knees draw in towards her chest. Her fingers pinch her wrist and toy with the bracelet. Unable to handle dire situations, she’s an ugly crier. She finds no relief in her tears, only brushes them away with the back of her trembling hand.

Numb, Vera phones back Will.

“I’ll be right over.”

Her voice sounds hollow, empty. The bedroom could easily swallow her whole, but it's Joan Ferguson's memory that is bound to do so.

On the other end, he sighs in relief.

Her red-rimmed, swollen eyes stare blankly into the darkness trying to will up something that isn’t there. So, she buries a bit of herself tonight and finds an empty grave.


End file.
